In commercial transactions, it is often necessary to record telephone conversations, for example as evidence of contractual agreements. Two main problem areas arise from this. On the one hand, the provisions of the data protection act must be observed in making the recordings and on the other hand—likewise in compliance with the provisions of the data protection act—an auditable long-term archiving of the recorded conversations is necessary.
Magnetically or digitally recording hardware solutions that can be connected to a conventional telephone are generally known in the field of telephone recordings. Information of the conversation partner/s of the recorded telephone conversations is hereby dependent on the announcement by the recording party. Furthermore, purely audio recordings are available that cannot provide any verified proof of the time they were made or of their unmodified originality. Similar solutions are known in particular in the field of Internet telephony by means of voice over IP (VoIP). Here software records the conversations on the subscriber's computer as an audio file. The same disadvantages apply here too as with the hardware solutions for standard telephones.